


Time for other things

by hesychasm (Jintian)



Category: Everwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-16
Updated: 2003-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/hesychasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy grows up.  Branches off after 2x01 "The Last of Summer."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time for other things

  
Ephram is right, about this and other, later things, but it isn't for some time that she sees it. And maybe the truth is that she never does figure out how to get used to that busted hand, that empty space beside Bright, that empty space within herself. But eventually it gets easier to wake up every morning, to leave the four safe walls of her room and go outside, to school, to walk down the halls while everyone tries to pretend they're not staring at her.

Ephram is a rock, but he forgets to tell her that even the smallest things take getting used to, things like watching a movie where someone dies, or changing the radio station and catching the tail end of a particular song. Eventually her dad says, "Amy, you're young, there is time for other things." Or maybe he says it differently, in that way he has of couching the hard knocks of life in precision and common sense, but it comes out the same and all she can think is, _Colin didn't. Colin didn't have time for other things._

But her dad is right, too, and time marches on. The days end and begin again and keep going, summer folds into fall, fall becomes winter. She wraps herself up in her thick coat and scarf and huddles in the passenger seat of Bright's truck on the way to school, watching the early sun break crisp over piles of snow and ice. One day, Bright lowers the volume on the truck stereo and says, "I got accepted to Notre Dame."

That pierces through the fog. "I didn't even know you applied."

"Yeah. I didn't tell anyone. I wasn't sure I'd get in. But it was mostly 'cause of football, you know..."

"Well, hey," she says. "Congratulations. Wow, guess this means you won't be giving me free burgers at McDonald's when we're forty, huh?"

He gives her a dirty look, then, after a moment: "It feels weird. To be thinking about this. I mean, without Colin."

And just like that, ice water, freezing cold. She turns away from him, watching the town pass by outside the window.

Bright presses on, "Amy, it's been months now -- "

But she doesn't let him finish. "It hasn't been that long," she says, and the rest of the drive is silent.

*

Ephram is a rock, but finally at the end of a year (and it must have been a year, because it's summer again, though she can't remember much about how she got there) he gets tired of things and shatters. He shouts at her, trembling with the force of it, "Amy, you can't keep holding onto a ghost!"

She walks away and doesn't speak to him for weeks. Except it turns out -- that just makes things harder. She's surprised at herself. She hadn't realized, really, how much he'd been there. How he always seemed to be right where she wanted him, everywhere she turned. She hadn't realized how long he'd been waiting.

Silent treatment over, and he does one of those things, those dramatic, drastic Ephram things, frustrated and angry and impatient, kissing her in the middle of the guilt trip she's laying on him for pushing too hard. It's awkward and half-accidental and not at all soft, a sensation she almost thought she'd forgotten, and she realizes in the middle of liking it that maybe, just maybe, she did need him to push.

She's almost eighteen. They have nearly a year, and she's surprised again when no one says anything: her family, Colin's family, Laynie. She doesn't like hanging out at Ephram's house, but one day she's over to study for exams and runs into Dr. Brown in the kitchen. Despite the inevitability of it she stands tongue-tied for a moment, until he pours her a glass of juice and just says, calmly, in that gentle voice, "It's been a while, Amy. It's good to see you here."

She says, "Thanks." Nods her head, looking down at the floor tile. "Dr. Brown, I..."

But he raises his hands in a gesture of peace, and says, "Thank _you_ , Amy," before fading back up the stairs. She swallows and leans against the counter for a moment, until Ephram finally comes looking for her.

"Did you find it?" he says.

"Find -- what?"

He points at the juice. "The glass. I was asking if you found it okay, but I guess you did." He tilts his head at her. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." She leans in to kiss him, so he can't see her eyes. "Let's go back and study."

*

There doesn't seem to be much point in getting upset when Ephram applies to colleges on the east coast. It's what she'd expect of him, had expected from the moment they'd met, and anyway they're all doing the same -- Bright already gone, Laynie aiming for California. Amy dutifully fills out the applications for places the guidance counselor recommends, and when acceptances come in the spring she looks around at Everwood beginning to bloom under the deep blue sky, and picks the school the farthest away from Colorado.

They have nearly a year, a prom, an after-prom party where Ephram is understanding and says all the right things about waiting until they're ready. But then there's the camping trip a week before graduation and she decides maybe it's time to find out if she is. He's gentle, or as gentle as he can be until the very last, and despite the pain she feels something, although she isn't quite sure it's how Laynie said it would be, or how she thought it would be.

The stars begin to get blurry, and she turns over in the sleeping bag, away from Ephram. After a second his slender hand strokes her shoulder. "You're thinking about him, aren't you?" Ephram asks. He waits, and waits, but she can't stop crying long enough to say _yes_ or _no_ or even _I'm sorry_ , and finally, with a sigh, he drops his hand.

*

And after that it's summer again. She and Ephram make their goodbyes in August, although the real goodbyes have already been said. She can't help but feel, letting go of his thin body on her porch and watching the Browns' car disappear down the road, turning east toward New York, that there's a weight lifting out of her as he goes. Only, he's not leaving an emptiness behind -- it's more like he's leaving a lightness.

*

"Write about loss," the freshman comp professor says. "Write about heartache. Let your reader get to know you through your words."

So she writes about her grandfather dying, when she was too young to have really known him, and it takes about two pages double-spaced, if she fiddles with the margins and the font. She sits at her desk with the paper in front of her while the professor asks if anyone wants to read theirs aloud. Someone gets up, a girl with messy hair and messy clothes, and she reads a story about her best friend dying in a car accident after they'd been drinking at a party. The girl's voice breaks and gets hoarse when she reaches the part about the funeral, and all the other freshmen shift nervously and stare at their fingernails.

Amy gets up, leaving the paper on her desk, and heads straight to the registrar's office to switch out of the class.

*

After that college is all right, more or less, and a week before graduation Ephram calls her up out of the blue. "We made it," he says. "How are you? It's been like, forever, it seems."

He sounds different, more grown up, the anger left behind and replaced by some of that same calmness she remembers from his father. They talk for a while about what they're planning to do after college -- he's going to perform, of course, and maybe try some composition -- and what Bright and Delia are up to, Dr. Brown's new marriage.

Then suddenly Ephram asks, "How's Laynie?"

"Laynie's good," Amy says. "She's moving to L.A., actually, with her boyfriend. But who knows how long that'll last. Everytime I hear from her she's dating some new guy."

"And you? You dating anyone?"

Amy hesitates. "Not seriously. It's kind of hard to have any kind of real relationship. I mean, I'm so busy studying."

"Studying? It's second semester senior year," Ephram says incredulously. Then, "Amy. Is that really why?"

And it's the same Ephram again, pushing at her, wanting too much. She hears the anger in her voice: "Look, it's not because of Colin."

"I'm just wondering, is all. I'm not -- I'm not diminishing what you had with Colin, I would never do that, but it was a long time ago. And you were -- we both were -- way too young to never fall in love with someone again."

She thinks about how to respond, how to talk about that sixteen year old girl she used to be, the one who still, when she's being honest, follows her around most days, the one whose entire universe had centered on a single person. She thinks about how to finally say she's sorry, for the year she nearly had with Ephram, for the years of half-hearted friendship afterwards, for already having loved as hard as she could.

Ephram says, "You're wrong. You always were wrong. You've got so much more to do."

He keeps trying, because that's what Ephram does, but eventually even he stops centering his universe around the past. She buys a few CDs he performs on, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Mozart, Chopin, Haydn. After a while he's far enough away that they make good background music, and she puts them on whenever she needs to concentrate on something important.

*

Years pass, and it turns out of course that Ephram is right, but not as right as he thinks. It's spring and she sits in the town square of Everwood, watching her daughter play soccer with Bright's two kids, waiting for Bright and her husband Tom to come back with the truck so they can start clearing out her grandmother's house. Another death, another loss, and it still hasn't been that long since the last one.

She watches her daughter, who possesses none of the natural grace she herself did at that age. Sarah's eager, but not athletic, her hair brown and ordinary like Tom's, and when she runs over to Amy holding out a hurt finger Amy kisses it better and wipes the tears away. "Want to sit by me for a while?" Sarah nods and clambers up onto the bench.

Amy strokes her hair, looking around at the town, noting the changes from her childhood, the similarities. Dr. Brown's office still across from her father's, a couple of new restaurants, the ice cream shop where Colin used to get her banana fudge sundaes when the weather was hot. "Don't chew with your mouth open, Grover," he'd say, then kiss her anyway, so both of their mouths were sticky and soft.

She blinks through sudden tears, raising her eyes to the mountains in the distance so Sarah won't be able to tell. Eventually they go away, and the sky reaching over the landscape is clear and sharp.


End file.
